Gender on stage or, what do 'Breakdown' and 'Men are from Mars' have in common?

Kerry ReidChicago Tribune

The women's marches held in protest of Donald Trump's inauguration last month threw already-fraught issues of gender discrimination into high profile. Away from the pink hats, three plays on Chicago stages this month also examine gender relationships and privilege — or the lack thereof. The tone and structure of the shows vary greatly — from documentary-style narrative to comedic faux-lecture to seemingly straightforward family drama. But all three question in some way what gender means for our identity and potential.

Collaboraction shines a light into the darker corners of Chicago theater in "Gender Breakdown," a compilation theater piece now in the Flat Iron Arts Building. Stories collected from more than 200 local theater artists, as well as statistical research conducted by researchers Kay Kron and Mariah Schultz as part of Kron's master's thesis at DePaul University, provide a road map through the sometimes-perilous journey of being a woman in the theater. The stories range from training that fails to give women (especially women of color) full opportunities to cattle call auditions that reduce them to body types.

During one segment, the 10 actors in the show read aloud actual "breakdowns," or character descriptions, from casting directors that traffic in tiresome stereotypes — shrewish professionals, scheming vixens, etc. These moments are countered, however, by joyful recollections of when the artists got "the bug" and plunged into the world of theater.

Created by Dani Bryant and directed by Erica Vannon, the show feels very much like a continuation of debates sparked by the allegations of abuse at the now-shuttered Profiles Theatre (obliquely referenced in one segment) and the birth of the Chicago advocacy and support organization Not in Our House.

In an interview following a recent rehearsal, Vannon noted that the show also grew in part out of a dinner party she attended with other theater artists where they discussed the question: What's working and what's not working for women in Chicago theater?

"One of the things that emerged is that it was also the first time I'd heard a criticism of the ensemble (model)," says Vannon. "You just think 'Oh, it's like-minded people and you get to play with different roles or play even with different design elements.' But a lot of the women in the room, because it was a very intersectional room, said 'It's not inclusive. In fact, it's very exclusive.' Because once you build the model up, you can only continue to include the same people over and over again. And that model is white, cis, het."

The ensemble in "Gender Breakdown" represents a diverse range of ages and ethnicities. But according to Kron's research, only 25 percent of the plays produced in Chicago in the 2015-16 theater season had female authors, and 36 percent were directed by women. Kron also notes that larger theaters (which of course tend to pay more and serve as springboards to higher career visibility) provided fewer acting opportunities than smaller, non-Equity companies.

At Steppenwolf, the cast for Young Jean Lee's "Straight White Men" is entirely male. Yet while the scenario — three grown brothers and their widowed father hanging out over Christmas — seems direct from American Family Drama 101, Lee infuses the show with sly insight into what it means to be the dominant demographic in a capitalist world while questioning the very nature of success itself.

Like the creators of "Gender Breakdown," Lee's show, which she started working on in 2012, grew from a series of conversations with many people. Describing her process in a phone interview, Lee says: "I open up the conversations to Facebook, and at a certain point interviews begin. I'm often exploring subject matter that isn't from my own identity." Lee, who is Korean-American, grew up in small-town Washington, where she says her ethnicity marked her as more of an outsider than her gender.

In a public conversation at Steppenwolf with performance artist Karen Finley prior to a preview of "Straight White Men," Lee said, "By nature, I'm not a political person," and noted that the play also came out of wondering what she would be like if she were a straight white man. "I'm sure I would be clueless and just enjoying my privilege."

Lee says that around the time she began working on the show, she noticed that "straight white men were starting to kick back against that as a derogatory label. The rest of us have been dealing with that our whole lives. For them, it was historically a new development since they were the default human. They're experiencing what everyone else experiences — not wanting to be labeled and judged based on your ethnicity and orientation and gender."

And then there's "Men Are From Mars — Women Are From Venus Live!" Based on the popular (if oft-derided) 1992 pop psychology book by John Gray, this one-man show by Eric Coble (starring Amadeo Fusca in the current touring production at the Broadway Playhouse) uses the premise that the audience is attending a lecture on understanding gender relationships.

Director Mindy Cooper, who has been with the show since its inception, describes it as "a hybrid between stand-up and theater," with video segments involving Gray himself and animations with "an adorable heteronormative husband and wife."

Cooper notes that producer Paul Emery originally wanted a male director — "someone who had a long marriage and history to bring to this. And I said 'Why shouldn't it be me? I'm a woman and I think it would be great to have a woman's perspective on a one-man show. It's from both sides of the bed."

And despite the overt heteronormativity of the subject matter, Cooper maintains that, "I made it a point early on to keep it non-alienating and embrace same-sex couples, and to try to break out of the rigid wording of 'men do this, women do this.' My husband and I switch roles all the time. One of the things the script talks about is that men do things one thing at a time, single file, and women do many things. That's not necessarily true in my relationship."

But Cooper also notes that the world of theater, despite the liberal leanings of many of its practitioners, is no less sexist than many other environments. "I have been the only woman on a very male-centric team putting on a Broadway show. I have been the holdout and the lone female opinion. And I have been belittled and I have had my opinion swept under the rug."

Creating inclusivity for women, people of color (and, as Lee noted in her conversation with Finley, for gender-fluid individuals) doesn't happen by happenstance. How do you get more diverse voices involved, onstage and off?

"My answer for that would be that you just have to make new friends," says Lee. "You have to find a real friend who is a woman or person of color. If you get one person who is like-minded and on the page with your mission and is really a friend, they will be able to help you."